Thursday, April 7, 2011

Missing beans

I recently heard of a dealer of antique maps - Geographicus - there was no way I would have heard of them but for something remarkable that they did. They scanned up their treasures and since these ancient maps were in public domain, released them for use on Wikimedia Commons. These maps are amazing sources of history ! Unlike modern history textbooks which have their own slants, these are original works with their original biases - probably to guide early traders find stuff to ship back to their homes. One of the maps I have been marvelling is this one from 1733. The full map by Homann's heirs can be found here but here is a crop of a region of interest. It includes places like Dharmapuri and the entire region holding 95 million people today is yet to be discovered.

Homann heirs 1733 map (no roads)

Come 1748 and the town of boiled beans is still not on their map! 1794 and Bengaluru (correct spelling!) appears in Jefferys map. Note that there are no major roads leading to it but then it seems like the Germans were not very interested in actual business. This was around the same time that the English were mapping the region so as not to get beaten again by Tipu.

Portion of 1794 Jeffreys map

The 1800 map by Faden Rennell shows road networks and it is clear that they are well established - note the neighbouring town of Pedda Ballapuram. In 1808 we see Chinna Ballapuram nearby.

1808 map

There must be many interesting things to study in these maps, rivers gone dry, towns coalescing, names and boundaries changing and so on. Perhaps we can have more original geography classes (looking back, I cannot even figure out if there was a guiding philosophy in the teaching of geography) now that the compilation of geographical knowledge itself becomes more visible.

Talking of maps, you must certainly have read The Selected Works of T(ecumseh) S(parrow) Spivet by Reif Larsen (http://tsspivet.com/). Fictional but fascinating byproduct of a cartographically besotted mind.